The Take

In Tangled, Rapunzel’s mental imprisonment and her desire to take the agency to see the world herself speak generally to how young girls need to free themselves from damaging longstanding cultural myths. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Friends' Emily is the Runner-Up Love Interest, a character who serves as a transition to the show's one true pairing. Let's take a look at what we can learn from her side of this story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How much do we want to see the Covid-19 pandemic reflected in our Films and TV shows – should stories be helping us process, or just letting us enjoy a much-needed escape? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many of the labels we still put on women - good girls and bad girls, wifeys and femme fatales – come from Madonna-Whore dichotomy. Here’s how to spot these archetypes on-screen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is How I Met Your Mother’s Ted Mosby the good guy he claims to be? Or is his romantic journey more self indulgent and sometimes sinister than he claims it is? What if he's the bad guy? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Helen is that woman you hate -- but also want to be. What's the problem of the Bridesmaids antagonist? Why is she incapable of getting what she really wants: friends? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Matrix Resurrections is an interrogation of the original film and its legacy, asking whether anything has improved as a result of the Matrix’s message to free your mind, or if the mind-control in our actual world has just gotten worse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's "Pick Me Girl" often manifests like the traditional "Good Girl Wifey” who judges single women. She can can even be an antifeminist who disavows women’s rights. But she is truly defined by her lack of time or respect for other women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Janet Jackson's early music tackled the body insecurities she’d dealt with throughout her early life as a child performer. Now, she's taking back control once again with her own 2022 documentary. So let's celebrate her legacy of centering female bodily agency in pop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Girlboss Villain is everywhere -- but are these stories about toxic female bosses incisive capitalist critiques, or are they actually kind of misogynistic, suggesting their desire for power is unwomanly or unnatural? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The less dreamy traits of Grey's Anatomy's Derek Shepherd have been the topic of discussion since the seemingly charming doctor was written out of the show. So what can we learn from his lack of growth? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Classic cinema is rapidly declining in popularity, largely because streaming services prioritize only the newest content. As a result, viewers are actually losing the ability to engage with the language of older movies. So how can we save dying classic cinema? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Friends’ Phoebe Buffay is quirky, unique, and has lived an interesting life, while by comparison, Mike Hannigan is... kind of bland. So did Phoebe actually settle or did they find the key to happy ever after? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Season 3 finale of Succession leaves us with some key takeaways about the nature of power: so much of it stems from others believing you have it, and that it’s not just about winning the stated game, but setting the terms of winning -- making up the rules and defining what power itself even is. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the premiere episodes of revival series And Just Like That, Sex and the City catches up with its characters to show us what it's like for women to grow older, though it remains to be seen if ladies can resurrect the seemingly joyless, sexless city that was once theirs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since The Office ended, theories on Toby have proliferated, with many even finding a bunch of clues that he’s the true Scranton Strangler. But Toby doesn’t deserve the hate, so why is he such a punching bag? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A key mission of Legally Blonde's Elle Woods is fighting the bias against blondes -- in particular, the "dumb blonde" stereotype. But where does this stereotype come from? Let's all dig into the roots of the assumptions about blondes and find out what's really behind them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The story of Forrest Gump is a myth of 20th-century America. Like any good myth, it filters historical facts through allegory, creating a symbolic journey that helps us make sense of a complicated era. So, what does Forrest Gump has to say about us -- and our national identity? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The good girl of film and tv plays by the rules. She's nice, polite, and probably a straight A student. Yet this perfect-seeming facade can mask her darker struggles, even from herself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Media coverage of Pete Davidson suggests a society that’s still as obsessed as ever with conventional female beauty and a “hotness gap” between the men and women in celebrity couples. But Pete's attractiveness is actually pretty obvious, and the coverage of his relationships needs to calm down and catch up with the times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Variations on the terrible trio, like The Plastics and the Unholy Trinity, have long dominated cinema’s and TV’s fictional high school hallways. So what is it about this rule of three and these particular recurring character types that add up to the perfect recipe for high-school popularity and oppression? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

East Asian women onscreen have long been haunted by the figure of the Dragon Lady: a violent seductress who will do anything to achieve her goals. At the same time, the dragon lady is unapologetically driven, ultra-assertive, and has agency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She's a Weird Girl, the black sheep of all female character tropes. Why do people misunderstand her, or are even scared of her? What secret powers does the weird girl have? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Privileged and miserably insecure Andy Bernard is The Office's cautionary tale about the limits of what wealth can (or rather can't) do for you. Many Office fans found Andy’s arc disappointing, but his choices eventually proved how many who grow up in toxic, status-obsessed environments often don’t transcend their learned behaviors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In capitalist terms, housewives as a group are highly influential, shaping everything from department-store stock to global politics. But whether she’s framed as an object of envy or pity, the housewife figure is routinely disrespected in our culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How I Met Your Mother's ending has never sat right with fans. Why is this conclusion regarded with such infamy? Should Ted and Robin have gotten together? Did the Mother live up to your expectations? Let's take a look at what doesn't work about the How I Met Your Mother series finale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The evolving discussion over symbolism in The Matrix is a testament to how much meaning the film holds for audiences. So which interpretations offer the most insight, and what does the Matrix teach us about the fundamental nature of art? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why are we still talking about whether or not female characters are likable? Historically, female characters have been over-defined by how much a male viewpoint character likes, or indeed, doesn’t like them -- creating a gendered bias of likability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The female victim-survivor binary of film & tv has produced both hapless "victim" characters and unrealistic "survivor" heroes -- so it's time we truly listen as the person who lived through hell tells her complicated story herself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

He's not like the other guys. He's a NICE guy -- but wait, is he really that nice? What's behind his sweet, romantic act? In this episode, we take on the Nice Guy archetype and figure out what he represents in our world today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Miranda Priestly actually "the devil" in The Devil Wears Prada? Her pursuit of excellence actually makes her a role model for working women, and we can all use a touch of Miranda in our professional lives -- that is, of course, if you’re willing to pay the price of perfectionism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Netflix's Clickbait uses the same kinds of techniques as internet clickbait to keep us pressing “next episode”: focusing on sensational, violent spectacle; raising tantalizing questions that it delays answering, and ending episodes with cliffhangers that tease a big reveal, only to send us down a lot of false paths. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The anti hero’s wife enables him to self-identify as a ‘family man,’ but they also serve to highlight that -- however much these men claim that their wrongdoing is separate from their pure family home -- it’s impossible to cleanly close the door on dirty business and retreat into the realm of pure domesticity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The mug speaks the truth: The Office’s Michael Scott (Steve Carell) IS the world’s best boss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than ever today, the Quirky Black Character is becoming a well-rounded protagonist in a Black-created story -- expressed not just as a personality, but through an individual or downright weird worldview that shapes the whole texture of the narrative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know Regina George (Rachel McAdams) actually tells us a lot about how dictatorships work? Listen to our take and find out more about this iconic character and her North Shore High “regime.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ted Lasso’s relentless optimism won us all over in season one. But by season two, Ted’s refusal to look anywhere but on the sunny side of things is looking less and less healthy. So what really went wrong with Nate, and how can you achieve a “Light Side” that’s based on a genuine, rock-solid foundation? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She’s not like other girls. She’s a COOL girl. But does this fun, junk food-loving hottie actually exist? And what’s behind this myth? In this episode, we take on how the Cool Girl has evolved onscreen and what she represents in our culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices